Saturday, July 2, 2016

In Wisconsin, the Koch/Bradley Foundation faction of the GOP has been making one last gasp effort born of desperation to try to block Donald Trump from becoming the party's presidential nominee. To accomplish this, they have been doing what comes naturally to them, urging delegates to ignore the will of the people they are representing and not vote for Trump.

Well, they should have known that the party establishment takes care of itself first and foremost.

Six of the Republican delegates, including a former governor and Michael Grebe, retired head of the Bradley Foundation, got bounced and replaced with pro-Trump people:

Grebe and Kleefisch, the two delegates of the six, have been replaced by longtime GOP activist Don Taylor and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who has urged Republicans to get behind Trump to help the party down-ballot.

Steineke, the Assembly majority leader, was an early and vocal member of the #NeverTrump movement. He first told WisPolitics.com in April he was dropping out as an at-large alternate because the party was poised to nominate Trump for the presidency.

Kleefisch still plans to attend part of the convention but decided to drop out because she has to return to Wisconsin during the week for official events, her campaign said. Meanwhile, Green, the party's nominee for guv in 2006, wrote in an email to WisPolitics.com, "In all honesty, in my case, it was purely a logistical issue. Nothing to do with who is or who is not the nominee ..." He did not detail what the logistical issue is that is preventing him from attending.

Under Wisconsin GOP rules, delegates are bound to the candidate who won them unless that candidate releases them or falls below 33 percent in any round of the balloting. If delegates try to vote for anyone else, party rules call for them to be removed as a delegate. That means the delegate changes are not expected to affect Wisconsin's allocation. Ted Cruz won 36 of the state's 42 delegates, including all 18 at-large delegates. Trump won six delegates from the 3rd and 7th CDs.

I strongly suggest that the Republicans considering changing their mascot from an elephant to a P.U.M.A. (Party Unity My Ass).